Google is afraid of Samsung, which is why the Pixel 4 is lackluster.

[dsignori]

The product line still serves some functions. It nudges other OEMs towards Google's vision of hardware that best enables their OS to remain dominant (small loss on hardware to reinforce ongoing deluge of profits from services). ..

If you mean FaceID or the Soli thing, I guess I can see that, maybe. If you mean things consumers actually care about (battery, storage, etc) I really don't think they are doing themselves any good, nor are they gaining any more market dominance. A consumer who runs out of battery at 4:30pm doesn't care much about Soli.

Google needs to embrace the WHOLE package at this price, not just a few new cool things. That is the hardware that will truly help them IMO>

 

[Jeremy8000]

If you mean FaceID or the Soli thing, I guess I can see that, maybe. If you mean things consumers actually care about (battery, storage, etc) I really don't think they are doing themselves any good, nor are they gaining any more market dominance. A consumer who runs out of battery at 4:30pm doesn't care much about Soli.

Google needs to embrace the WHOLE package at this price, not just a few new cool things. That is the hardware that will truly help them IMO>

They failed to give any compelling benefit with Soli. Facial recognition was driven by the impression they have that Android needs to follow Apple, but removal of the FPS was premature without app support for facial authentication. Personally I don't care how authentication is done, so long as it is (1) secure, (2) fast and reliable, and (3) autonomic - the user shouldn't have to give any thought to its function. With the rear FPS on my Pixel, my muscle memory had me unconsciously unlocking the phone when ever I picked it up, pulled it from a pocket, etc.

As to battery, it's not the chargemageddon we thought. I'm seeing reports of even the "woefully battery-challenged" Pixel 4 achieving 5 hours of screen time, which is hardly as dire as most predicted. Most of us here use the phones much more extensively than the average person, for whom 5 hours of screen time is more than ample for a day. It probably wouldn't work for me, and maybe not for you, but it would seem that the 4's battery life is more comparable to that of the 3 than not - which may bode well for the 4 XL, if relative efficiency is the same, could be better than the 3XL in respect to battery life.

Regardless, if I set my mind to it, I can run any battery dry well before the end of a day. All I have to do is game for a few hours...

 

[dsignori]

They failed to give any compelling benefit with Soli. Facial recognition was driven by the impression they have that Android needs to follow Apple, but removal of the FPS was premature without app support for facial authentication. Personally I don't care how authentication is done, so long as it is (1) secure, (2) fast and reliable, and (3) autonomic - the user shouldn't have to give any thought to its function. With the rear FPS on my Pixel, my muscle memory had me unconsciously unlocking the phone when ever I picked it up, pulled it from a pocket, etc.

As to battery, it's not the chargemageddon we thought. I'm seeing reports of even the "woefully battery-challenged" Pixel 4 achieving 5 hours of screen time, which is hardly as dire as most predicted. Most of us here use the phones much more extensively than the average person, for whom 5 hours of screen time is more than ample for a day. It probably wouldn't work for me, and maybe not for you, but it would seem that the 4's battery life is more comparable to that of the 3 than not - which may bode well for the 4 XL, if relative efficiency is the same, could be better than the 3XL in respect to battery life.

Regardless, if I set my mind to it, I can run any battery dry well before the end of a day. All I have to do is game for a few hours...

I’m still not following. How is any of this driving some Google vision. I don’t see it.

 

[Jeremy8000]

I’m still not following. How is any of this driving some Google vision. I don’t see it.

My reply strayed from that in focusing on the eagerness to presume performance based on specs, sorry.

In terms of 'driving their vision,' Google sets both suggested guidelines and mandates with reference to what is in their view appropriate, or mandatory, for a phone running Google's services, and with access to select services and the Play Store as their bargaining chip. All centers around promoting widespread adoption of Android OS first and foremost - not necessarily their Pixel devices directly - and therefore greater use of their services. There are some things they opt with the Pixels that promote greater dependence on connectivity (as that encourages use of their services, and therefore secures more information value for them) such as not providing SD storage, but they don't prohibit others from adopting them as it would be a pain point if mandated that would drive some users to seek an alternate service that wouldn't provide them as much information-based revenue.

Basically Google wouldn't mind selling a ton of Pixels, but it won't hurt them if they don't.

 

[dsignori]

My reply strayed from that in focusing on the eagerness to presume performance based on specs, sorry.

...

No worries. I agree with most of what you're saying as well. I just don't think they are doing themselves any favors in promoting their vision at all with what they released this year, at this price.

 

[SupraLB]

Just a reminder as the OP of this post...

1. If Samsung was to drop Android, Samsung would have the largest phone operating system, followed by Apple and the leftover of Androids on LG, Motorola, Sony.
2. Google revenue would be devastated by losing all the data they need from Samsung phones (it feeds their search revenue, map data, traffic, ad revenue, etc....millions if not billions).

Point being....Samsung has become such a big portion of their business (44%), that Google cannot **** them off. Plus with Huawei leaving Android, Samsung will be over 50% of Googles phone business! No way will they ever develop a Galaxy killer phone.

 

[Jeremy8000]

Just a reminder as the OP of this post...

1. If Samsung was to drop Android, Samsung would have the largest phone operating system, followed by Apple and the leftover of Androids on LG, Motorola, Sony.
2. Google revenue would be devastated by losing all the data they need from Samsung phones (it feeds their search revenue, map data, traffic, ad revenue, etc....millions if not billions).

Point being....Samsung has become such a big portion of their business (44%), that Google cannot **** them off. Plus with Huawei leaving Android, Samsung will be over 50% of Googles phone business! No way will they ever develop a Galaxy killer phone.

Not sure how to tell you this, but Samsung doesn't own their own mobile phone operating system...

Also, if Samsung was to drop Android, the existing marketshare they have would still have been running on Android. It's not like every Note owner out there will suddeny find their phone OS had changed overnight.

In order to retain that market share going forward Samsung would need to find a way to convince their userbase to leave a fully matured, secure, and developed OS to come to their alternative over Android and iOS.

Edit - forgot to mention, app developers aren't going to rush to learn and build out support for a market before it substantially exists to be able to provide them assured revenues. Look how long it took for Android to even be remotely comparable in app offerings to iOS...

 

[anon(10641352)]

Samsung would lose millions of customers unless they worked with developers to make apps available on day one and give credits on their app store to cover the costs of some of the paid apps people would have to repurchase. If both of these don't happen it'll be an uphill battle for them.

 

[anon(10641352)]

Not sure how to tell you this, but Samsung doesn't own their own mobile phone operating system...

Also, if Samsung was to drop Android, the existing marketshare they have would still have been running on Android. It's not like every Note owner out there will suddeny find their phone OS had changed overnight.

In order to retain that market share going forward Samsung would need to find a way to convince their userbase to leave a fully matured, secure, and developed OS to come to their alternative over Android and iOS.

Samsung toyed around with making their own OS a while back but your right they would have to find a way to get users to leave Android and all the apps they have, in many cases, paid for. That's why it's so hard to get people to switch between iOS and Android...

 

[Jeremy8000]

Samsung toyed around with making their own OS a while back but your right they would have to find a way to get users to leave Android and all the apps they have, in many cases, paid for. That's why it's so hard to get people to switch between iOS and Android...

They've done a bit with Tizen (which is not a Samsung-owned OS, but an open source Linux based OS), but it is far more suitable for budget devices than flagships. If there are any OS efforts they've made directly, they either are exceptionally good about keeping secrets, or likely lag behind Huawei, who just admitted they're years away from their OS being truly competitive.

 

[dsignori]

Just a reminder as the OP of this post...

1. If Samsung was to drop Android, Samsung would have the largest phone operating system, followed by Apple and the leftover of Androids on LG, Motorola, Sony.
2. Google revenue would be devastated by losing all the data they need from Samsung phones (it feeds their search revenue, map data, traffic, ad revenue, etc....millions if not billions).

Point being....Samsung has become such a big portion of their business (44%), that Google cannot **** them off. Plus with Huawei leaving Android, Samsung will be over 50% of Googles phone business! No way will they ever develop a Galaxy killer phone.

Just a reminder that Samsung would sell WAY WAY less phones without Android and would not approach anywhere near the sales they have now. Try selling it without Gmail, Youtube, Google Photos, Google Maps, Nest, Google Docs, all the other Google apps, as well as the Google Play Store. Good luck with that. It won't happen. Samsung needs Google even more than the reverse.

 

[anon(10641352)]

Exactly. If Samsung left sometime else would step in...

 

[eshropshire]

No idea why the OP brought it up - my post was intended to point out so many of the fallacies in rebuttal of the argument he made.

Customers perceive the battle as being iOS vs Android, Apple vs Samsung vs Google vs LG vs etc...
The companies are waging battle over revenue.

In that sense, Google is winning with over 3/4 of all mobile devices in the world running on Google's OS, giving them revenue stemming from collected information from its services that dwarfs the hardware revenues. I suspect they've taken a loss with every Nexus and Pixel launch to date, or at best barely broken even, and they're ok with that.

The product line still serves some functions. It nudges other OEMs towards Google's vision of hardware that best enables their OS to remain dominant (small loss on hardware to reinforce ongoing deluge of profits from services). Also, it gives them a platform with which to keep Android and Google's names in high discussion (leak after leak keeping them at the top of the daily mobile tech recaps wasn't an accident).

Fully agree. If you are in the phone business selling high end gets you the profits. Another major reason for wanting to be in the high end is selling apps, services and media. High end customer buy a lot of all three. Low end customers buy very few if any for their phones. One reason Apple has zero interest in the low end of the market. We are seeing an emergence of a mid tier market, but for phones priced in the $500-$650 range. Will be interesting to see how this market develops as the phone market matures.

 

[bp3dots]

Only the kind of people on forums like this think the Pixel series is lackluster. Obviously they don't have the same brand recognition, but demo one side by side with a current Samsung and the specs aren't going to matter to the average Joe/Jane. Then that's where the brand comes in and folks go with the more familiar one.

Pixel 4 is on trend for what Google seems to want. They have the luxury of putting out exactly that while they get their $ in other places. Plenty of companies sell a product that they have no interest in being the biggest volume player in it's market.

 

[ScottsoNJ]

Only the kind of people on forums like this think the Pixel series is lackluster. Obviously they don't have the same brand recognition, but demo one side by side with a current Samsung and the specs aren't going to matter to the average Joe/Jane. Then that's where the brand comes in and folks go with the more familiar one.

Pixel 4 is on trend for what Google seems to want. They have the luxury of putting out exactly that while they get their $ in other places. Plenty of companies sell a product that they have no interest in being the biggest volume player in it's market.

Really ? Specs are what people compare in everything they buy. So when someone goes in to buy a phone and they compare the battery sizes of say the S10E and Pixel 4 it won't matter? Or if 1 has expandable storage and 1 doesn't?

 

[buzzy3970]

Correct battery size, base memory, camera features. Us frequent forum visitors aren't the only ones looking at specs these days. May not be the majority but a big percentage has started paying attention to certain phone features.

Really ? Specs are what people compare in everything they buy. So when someone goes in to buy a phone and they compare the battery sizes of say the S10E and Pixel 4 it won't matter? Or if 1 has expandable storage and 1 doesn't?

 

[anon(10641352)]

3 hours and 55 minutes of screen on time and I'm at 51% battery. I've been using it the whole time too. It hasn't been just sitting in a table. I'd say that's not too shabby.

 

[buzzy3970]

I would say it's equal. Samsung has brought a lot to Android in terms of features. Dual apps, multi page screenshots, and let's not forget the biggest of the all a clear all button for current running apps all where standard on flagship Samsung devices before google decided to adapt them. I think Samsung would be successful if they started with the new os on there entry level devices. There are people that use Samsung devices and have know idea they're phones are running Android lol. To the mass consumer it's about being budget friendly.

Just a reminder that Samsung would sell WAY WAY less phones without Android and would not approach anywhere near the sales they have now. Try selling it without Gmail, Youtube, Google Photos, Google Maps, Nest, Google Docs, all the other Google apps, as well as the Google Play Store. Good luck with that. It won't happen. Samsung needs Google even more than the reverse.

 

[anon(10641352)]

They'd have no idea until they went to try and download the latest app and it's not available....

 

[dsignori]

I would say it's equal. Samsung has brought a lot to Android in terms of features. Dual apps, multi page screenshots, and let's not forget the biggest of the all a clear all button for current running apps all where standard on flagship Samsung devices before google decided to adapt them. I think Samsung would be successful if they started with the new os on there entry level devices. There are people that use Samsung devices and have know idea they're phones are running Android lol. To the mass consumer it's about being budget friendly.

Agreed. I think we’re saying mostly the same thing. They’d do ok. But that’s it